Mitternacht
by angelofthelightanddark
Summary: Night falls upon a midnight watch, Riverwood guarded from all manner of things that skulk in the pitch-black darkness.


It's the movement that catches Bjorn's eye. A slinking, skulking movement as a lithe figure climbs up the wall, almost spiderlike in its motion.

"Good evening, Kaama," he says after she's settled onto the railing, hidden in the shadows.

She doesn't give an answer and he's not expecting one.

She's not a woman of many words but she has helped defend Riverwoods from vampires and bandits over the past ten years, and so most leave her be, which is exactly how Kaama likes it.

Thunder rumbles overhead as Bjorn's watch continues, and it's only when rain begins to patter onto the thatched roof above the gate, that Kaama slinks onto the wall beside him, crouching to watch the road.

Her pointed ears are flat to her skull, water beading at her temples and she shakes her head, annoyed, her red braid flailing against her back.

There are bone charms woven into the braid, well polished and gleaming in the torchlight. Bjorn's asked Kaama before what they mean, and had gotten a shrug and a grunt as an answer.

"Bone-walkers," Kaama rasps, reaching for the pouch at her hip, uncoiling a bowstring and taking her longbow from where it had hung across her back.

"Bone-walkers?" Bjorn asks, squinting into the now sheeting rain.

"The ones who walk when their bones should be dust," Kaama says. " _Bluttrinker._ Blood-drinkers."

"Vampires," Bjorn says, "How many?"

Kaama strings her bow, a wicked looking thing with notched edges and jutting finials darkened red. The arrow she fits to the string is just as vicious, a slender bone arrow with raven-feather fletching, the tip dipped in some viscous liquid.

"Two," Kaama says, firing into the dark, giving a low snarl of satisfaction when a yelp sounds.

Bjorn whistles, giving notice to the other guards that walk patrol of the stituation.

Kaama fires again, "One."

Bjorn catches sight of a dark figure hurtling towards the gate, and he reaches for his spear and throws, piercing the vampire in the side. It goes down with a shriek that quickly cuts off as the third of Kaama's arrows buries itself into its eye, deep into its brain.

Bjorn finds the signal horn and gives the all-clear.

"Good catch, Kaama," Bjorn tells her.

"Bosmer have better sight than humans," Kaama says with a shrug, unstringing the bow and coiling the bowstring, placing it in her pouch again. She unsheathes a dagger made of what looks like chipped stone and setting her bow aside, leaps down to the ground on the other side of the wall, vanishing into the dark.

Bjorn is pretty sure that she's going to decapitate the vampires and stick their heads on a stake as a warning to the others. She's done it a few times before, but vampires are a stubborn lot and they keep coming.

Bjorn listens hard, trying to pinpoint where in the dark Kaama is to no avail. So he settles back, keeping an eye on the road through the pouring rain.

They've had many rainstorms like this the past few weeks and the rainy season is just kicking into high swing, so he's expecting similar night watches.

Kaama vaults back up to the wall within ten minutes, cleaning her dagger and sheathing it.

"Hard to carve wood in rain," she says.

"So what did you do with the bodies?" Bjorn asks.

"Dumped in hollow," Kaama says. "Go back later." She sits down, laying her bow across her lap, running a thumb along the ridges of its limbs, eyes fixed on the road.

Thunder claps overhead, lighting slashing through the dark to reveal an empty road stretching out before them.

Bjorn is just thankful that Riverwood has proper gates and walls for the first time in years, even if they had had to build them themselves. Gates meant that anyone attacking would have to get through those first, giving the guards more time to mount a counterattack.

Rain drums into the thatch, and Bjorn watches the road, sweeping his gaze back and forth at intervals, finding little movement save a startled deer, who leaps across the cobblestones, hooves clattering despite the din of the storm.

The beast darts into the forest, legs kicking wildly as it hurries away.

Kaama turns her head to follow its path, her eyes like miniature moons in her dark face. Bjorn has never meet anyone else with such strange looking eyes.

They were not grey or silver, just a stark pure white, no pupils to be seen at all. Moon-blank, the Nords called them, the eyes of a person who has stared up at the moons for far too long and become as wild as the changing seasons.

Kaama, when she had been asked about it, had said that her clan viewed it as a blessing of Y'ffre, the forest god. Bjorn was surprised that she had given an answer at all to such a personal question.

Then again, he reflects, it might have been because it was Dorthe asking.

Kaama has always had a soft spot for the blacksmith's daughter, who took to smithing like a falcon to the wind. Any crafting the child put her mind to, she excelled, and when she had asked Kaama to teach her how to craft bone, the Bosmer had done so.

It had taken longer for Dorthe to learn that craft which Bjorn think was more due to Kaama's difficulty with the Norse tongue.

"It is clumsy," Kaama had once said, frowning over the words, "like damming a river with no path dug. It has no beauty. It is blunt, like rocks."

"Then what is your language like?" Bjorn had asked, unable to resist the urge.

Kaama had glared at him. "It is the hunt, the chase, the soaring of the eagle to the mountain peak. Sharp and harsh but beautiful in its way."

" _Es ist kalt heit Abend,"_ Kaama says now, staring out into the rain. _"Wenn ich meinen arsch einfrieren wollte wäre ich zu Windhelm gegangen."_

"What?" Bjorn asks. His knowledge of Bosmeri is limited to simple things like hello and how are you, and goodbye.

"It is cold," Kaama translates. Bjorn is pretty sure that she mentioned Windhelm but lets it lie.

"It is also raining," he says, though she is right. There is a chill that has come down from the mountains to make the night watch more miserable, chill fingers raking through Bjorn's fair hair, sending icy shivers down his spine.

Kaama nods agreement, digging through her pouch, pulling out a piece of jerky which she proceeds to gnaw on.

The rest of the watch passes without incident and Bjorn gratefully switches with Ælsige at dawn, the gates swinging open to herald the new day.

"Goodnight Kaama," Bjorn calls as he walks down the stairs and the Bosmer tilts her head, watching him with eerie eyes.

She smiles, baring her sharpened teeth, "Rest well."

"You too," Bjorn says, heading to the bunkhouse. Gods, it is good to be under a warm roof again.

"Heard you had vampires," Eadgyð says over her porridge, her blue eyes amused.

"Aye," Bjorn says, unbuckling his sword belt and setting it aside, slumping into the chair nearest the fire. "Kaama is probably going to stake their heads, now that it's daylight."

"She does like doing that to them, doesn't she?" Eadgyð muses.

"As long as she's not doing it to us, what does it matter?" Bjorn asks, stealing some of her bread, ignoring Eadgyð's protests.

It's delicious, hot and studded with herbs, fresh from the oven.

"I suppose it doesn't," Eadgyð says, frowning at him. "You could get your own, you know."

"Then I'd have to get up," Bjorn says.

"You've got night shift again tonight, yeah?" Eadgyð asks, leaning back from her chair to fill up another bowl with porridge, shoving it and a spoon at him.

"Thanks," Bjorn says. "And yes."

"You should get some rest then," she says.

"That's the plan. Food first then sleep."

"Sounds good to me," Eadgyð says, mournfully. "I've got patrol down past the lake."

"That's not so bad," Bjorn tells her, blowing on the steaming porridge. "At least you get a good view."

"Eh," Eadgyð waves the comment away. "But we've had reports of necromancers nearby. I don't like those creepy mages."

"Does anyone?" Bjorn asks.

Eadgyð snorts. "Maybe those mages up at the College. Heard there's been some kind of weirdness up there lately. A new Archmage and everything."

"Maybe they'll whip it into shape," Bjorn says. "The world's been strange enough these past years."

They've had dragons and vampires, even a few werewolves. Bjorn just hopes nothing else happens to crawl out of the woodwork. He's had enough of world-ending business to last the rest of his life.

 **A/N: Kaama says something along the lines of "It's cold tonight." and "If I wanted to freeze my ass off, I would have gone to Windhelm." Apologies if I've messed up the German, I was using google translate and I don't know any native speakers.**


End file.
